


Seams

by wheatleyandrews



Series: Greendreams [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Makeup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 13:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheatleyandrews/pseuds/wheatleyandrews
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jojen can sulk all he wants," she'd told Bran as they rode at the tip of the procession that day, with only the brown, weathered dust of the kingsroad before them coupled with the pillows of clouds that hung above. Sour guilt had locked Bran's jaw tightly shut as Jojen galloped off past them, eyes glistening as Bran refused to deny what the sight shown them both again. "You're both just human." Bran's eyes locked dead into the ruts on the road, where ten thousand wagons had trudged through the journey from Greywater Watch to Winterfell. "We all have needs, Bran, and my beloved brother is no exception either."</p><p>Bran didn't dare look her in the eye or lend mind to her vile implications. He raised his proud chin and breathed in deeply, contemplating his words. "All I need in the world is him, Meera," he said, nodding solemnly to reassure himself that those words were true. He sighed once more, but Meera shushed his unsaid doubts away. "Love finds a way, Bran. No matter promises you might make or oaths you may swear, if that love is true it won't ever leave you in the cold."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seams

**Author's Note:**

> Again, ten thousand thanks to my wonderful beta-er ttwany3! Without her the last couple works in the series wouldn't have been possible (well, at least they would have been way worse). 
> 
> This takes place a few days after Black and a little less than a year before Blue.

The night belonged to the crickets. Every nook of the forest trickled with their song as the moonlight poured like milk through the thin, bare fingers of maple, hickory and sycamore. Spring hadn't yet smiled on the North, but for its King this night was as warm and welcoming as the height of summer. The royal procession slept calmly: they'd managed to quarter all seven kingsguard and all thirty sworn swords that followed behind them through the glens of the North in just five airy tents, though Lord Commander Rickon's deep-throated snores made thirty-six of them wish they hadn't. Deep in the forest, however, only cricketsong rang out. A single candle bloomed in the darkness between Bran, Jojen, Meera and the heart tree that gazed solemnly over them, the dark figures of shadow tapering among the bare branches that scratched together in the canopies far above.

The strawhaired lord pouted as the candlelight shone on his parchment, making the wet ink shimmer like rippled bronze. Little had changed in Jojen's demeanor since the sun slipped from the sky, as Meera foretold and Bran dismayed.

"Jojen can sulk all he wants," she'd told Bran as they rode at the tip of the procession that day, with only the brown, weathered dust of the kingsroad before them coupled with the pillows of clouds that hung above. Sour guilt had locked Bran's jaw tightly shut as Jojen galloped off past them, eyes glistening as Bran refused to deny what the sight shown them both again. "You're both just human." Bran's eyes locked dead into the ruts on the road, where ten thousand wagons had trudged through the journey from Greywater Watch to Winterfell. "We all have needs, Bran, and my beloved brother is no exception either."

Bran didn't dare look her in the eye or lend mind to her vile implications. He raised his proud chin and breathed in deeply, contemplating his words. "All I need in the world is him, Meera," he said, nodding solemnly to reassure himself that those words were true.

She chuckled again, shaking her head. "There's many things I wish I hadn't done, sweet husband. That night wasn't my noblest either." Bran's brown locks ticked slightly towards her, but he quickly resumed his stoic stance. "I told him that he could take that little lizard crown of his, and all the honor it earned him, and fuck himself with it," she said, in a quick breath of honesty. "I swore to him that I'd always protect him, that I would shield him until the gods took me away from him. It's just, I-- any sibling should be jealous, and that envy got my better." She sighed, and another chuckle bubbled through her throat. "Perhaps the gods didn't mean for us to take well to wine."

Bran's pallor cracked briefly into a smile before falling once more to stone. "Perhaps I should make you the Lady of the Greywater. All justice flows from the king, after all," he said, his eyes rolling, "and Jojen has enough on his hands, protecting me."

A soft _pff_ of sarcasm rolled off her lips. "And I've always had to follow after him, and now the likes of you as well for, how many years now? Past a dozen, certainly. Do you think that grand title would make my poor burden lighter?" Her tone grew childishly mocking, and finally Bran relented with a laugh. "I'll clean up my own messes, _your grace_." As Bran sat upright, finally tilting to face her in the mottled, foggy sunlight, she jabbed a nimble finger at him. "But for you, however..."

Bran sighed once more, but Meera shushed his unsaid doubts away. "Love finds a way, Bran. No matter promises you might make or oaths you may swear, if that love is true it won't ever leave you in the cold."

"Are you talking of Rickon?" Bran questioned as his head snapped to the road once more.

"I suppose I could be." She shrugged. "Look at all the oaths he's sworn, and look at how his little twins break them with every step round Winterfell they take." Rickon, who tarried behind them on a great, black stallion fitting of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, had always interpreted his oaths in a loose fashion. _I only said I would never marry,_ he would say, _Not that I wouldn't father children._ He shook his gleaming chainmail whenever he mentioned that loophole. _Does this look black to you?_  

Before Rickon swore his life to his brother, he'd fallen in love with the daughter of a dyer in the wintertown. Her long blonde hair always shone like the sunsets of summer, and the deep blue of her eyes gleamed like the still mirror of the godswood's pond. Loranice, her name was. She and her father Kenry fled their village just a half day's ride from Riverrun when Lord Frey marched on that ancient castle, and sold their last dyes for a sail to Sweetsister across the Bite. There they lay low until the day the wolves came again to Winterfell and Bran wore the crown of a king. As soothing and reassuring as she'd found the walls of Winterfell, Loranice soon found every inch of Rickon's warm embrace just so. He'd been their escort into the wintertown's makeshift barracks for refugees, and once he laid one hand on Loranice he prayed he'd never have to take that hand away for long.

But no matter how drunk they fell on each other's love, nothing could stop the honest truth: Rickon was highborn, the Prince of Winterfell and in line to inherit the throne, while sweet, soft Loranice had no title, no castle, not even a surname. Kenry thought Rickon a sweet boy, perhaps a smidge daft and adventurous for a lordling, but loving all the same. Still, he implored his daughter to find some husband more appropriate to their station in life, if only to keep from becoming the bastard branch of House Stark. 

Yet Rickon wanted never to sit on that twisted wooden throne and swearing himself to the Kingsguard was the only loophole he could jump through towards disinheritance. It would have no effect on his prospects of marrying his love, after all. Though he would swore never to marry, his birth prevented sweet Loranice from calling him 'husband' even if he hadn't. And so they carried on all the same, as though nothing had changed. The day Rickon knelt before his king and solemnly repeated the words became the night where he took Loranice's maidenhood. It was the closest thing they'd have to a wedding, they told themselves. Soon, the sweet girl's belly quickened with child.

Bran could never bear to condemn these children to a life of bastardy, and yet he could never name them Starks, or else make the waters of succession to his throne even murkier. On the day his brother's sweet twins came into the world, before they'd even been named, Jojen had written the decree bringing House Dyer into the nobility of the North, and naming Loranice's father Lord Kenry of the Motherly Sept. When the stones of Winterfell rose again Bran had his mother's little sept erected once more, and it had enough space for a handful of clergy to take bed, meat and mead, but no flock had came to the castle walls. Loranice and her father held the Seven holy, hailing from the South, and so Jojen suggested the sept should become theirs. The Dyers would have no bannermen and no retainers, but they could taste this tiny slice of their home within Winterfell's walls. Their arms were decreed to be a golden rose on a field of purple, and any children born of Lady Loranice Dyer to Rickon would fly her banners and take her name.

And so, for Rickon, love found a way. His little twins, Lord Loram and Lady Ezebel of the House Dyer, would soon see their sixth name day, warm in the embrace of their mother, their father and Winterfell.

Under the dark gaze of the heart tree, Bran knew that his love would find its way too. In the candlelight, Jojen's neat scrawl streamed over the greasy, yellowed parchment as Bran spoke. They'd rode him down to bring him here; the strawhaired Hand rode far ahead of the pack of the procession even after the sun set. Under the flash of fireflies and the milk of the moon, Meera and Bran led him to this long-forgotten holy patch. They told him nothing, although his questions spurned them like the sting of bees. He was still the King's Hand, they reminded him, and the Hand brings the King's wishes to light, even if those wishes come in the darkness of midnight.

"In the name of Brandon of House Stark, Lord of the First Men and the Crannogmen, King of Winter and Warrior of the North, done in the word of Jojen of House Reed, Lord of Greywater Watch, Warden of the Neck and Hand of the King," Jojen repeated, his eyes never flitting from the page to meet Bran and Meera's insistent stares, "the seams of marriage between his grace and his lady wife, Meera of House Reed, Lady of the First Men and the Crannogmen, Queen of Winter and Nurse of the North are hereby dissolved forever." Once more, Jojen's brow furrowed as it had when Bran spoke the words, but he continued. "Queen Meera shall retain all titles, honors and incomes bestowed upon her upon her marriage to his grace, as well as the privilege to take name as a lady of House Stark." As Jojen reached the end of the page, the parchment snapped over and rolled across his fingers. "Done in the sight of gods and men, here in the court of his grace the king." _One could hardly call this court,_ Jojen thought, but finally wicked away from the royal decree to meet Bran's gaze. "And what is the meaning of this, Bran?" he asked, voice flat to convey how little he truly cared to be here.

Bran opened his mouth, but Meera spoke before him. "If I could just borrow this, sweet brother," she said, pulling the slate, parchment and inkwell from his lap.

 _Now!_ The thought raced over Bran's mind, and soon his hand shot to rest on Jojen's. The strawhaired lord tried to pull away, fast in a twist, but Bran's grip grew tighter. "I love you, and I will do anything for you," Bran whispered, once more his cheeks flooding with guilt. "Which is why I'm doing this."

A salty wash of aggression came over Jojen's mind, pushing words to his lips he could just barely hold in. _You can go fuck your little servant just a while longer with all the love you have for me. It wouldn't hurt so much for him._ It took a flash for Jojen to throw reins and reel his rage back. _He made one mistake,_ a soft voice whispered to him. _You can give him a chance to make up for his wrongs._

Jojen's hand fell liquid in Bran's grasp, but the king held their embrace steady as the candlelight rippled over their entwined fingers. He glanced to Meera, and at her nod he locked his gaze with Jojen's once more. "In the name of Brandon of House Stark, Lord of the First Men and the Crannogmen, King of Winter and Warrior of the North," Bran said, his voice peppered with soft cracks as his heartbeat pumped faster, "done in the word of Meera of House Reed, Lady of the First Men and the Crannogmen, Queen of Winter and Nurse of the North," -- as Meera's nimble fingers twisted the quill over the parchment, her eyes rolled, unseen. _As if I don't know these words by heart,_ she thought, silently laughing at Bran's insistence of every rigamarole of royalty -- "let all loyal men celebrate the loving marriage of his grace to Jojen of House Reed, Lord of Greywater Watch, Warden of the Neck and Hand of the King."

Suddenly, Jojen's grip quickened around Bran's slender fingers. Once more his green eyes were welling, but now his lips curled lovingly.Bran never ceased to amaze him. _To break ten thousand years of tradition and throw them into the dust, just for me..._ _This is his way-- no, their way to ask forgiveness._

"Done in the sight of gods and men, here in the court of--"

"His grace the king, yes," Meera piped, already having scrawled the words. She blew the ink dry and slipped the scrolls into her sleeves. _These will be the first laws to never see the notary of Winterfell,_ she thought, knowing that the bannermen wouldn't stand to defend these words no matter what might come. _But secrets are what we're best at._

Nonetheless she produced a long strip of silk and slowly looped it over Bran and Jojen's grasp. "I hereby seal these two souls, binding them as one until the end of time," she said, flitting her glances between them, but none of their teary eyes flitted to hers, only locked in each other. "Look upon each other and say the words," she said, as the knot slipped through her thin fingers and tugged taut.

They knew the vows by heart, having looked on at the thousand weddings of this lord and that lord, bannermen and vassals. "Under the sight of the gods, I offer you my solemn vow of love and faith." Bran breathed deeply, trying desperately to cool his beating heart, but Jojen's fast grip soothed him instead. "For rich or for poor, for summer or for winter, for sickness or for health, I am yours and you are mine, and the seams of love shall bind us--"

Bran had to glance away, blinking to shake the tears from his eyes, but Jojen's green shimmered with a golden veil of candlelight. 

"-- from this day, until the end of my days."


End file.
